


Singing to the Sea

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 00:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/985482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor remembers, as he wanders the shores of the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singing to the Sea

He regrets.

He is the last one left, and sometimes he thinks that they left their regrets to him, passing on the burden even as they left their broken bodies behind. One by one their  _f_ _ëar_  slipped away, their bodies too damaged to hold them any longer, until it was only the two of them left, together at the very end. Two brothers, two jewels. It had almost seemed too perfect, thinks Macalaurë wryly. Maybe that was why they had almost allowed themselves to hope. Although in some sense, he had known, and he was sure Maitimo had too. When the skin had been burned from their hands, he could see in his brother’s eyes a sort of tired acceptance, amid the pain. Maitimo knew pain. It was like an old familiar friend to him. He made his choice.

Sometimes, Macalaurë thinks he should have cast himself into the ocean, taking the accursed thing down with him into the depths. It would have had an almost pleasing symmetry to it, he thought bitterly. Fire and water. The last two sons dying with their father’s greatest and most terrible creations. But it hadn’t been like that. He couldn’t, at the end, something stopping him, rooting him to the ground even as he felt his arm swing wide, casting the jewel away, as far away from himself as he could. Was it cowardly? He doesn’t know. The Valar are silent, so silent. Silent then and silent now. His heart is empty, hollow. And so he lingers, wandering the edges of the world, burdened with the weight of all their regrets.

He sings, because it is all he knows. He sings to fill the silence, because he is his voice and his voice is him. Sometimes he feels that if he is silent he will simply disappear.

He does not know if that would be better or worse.

At first his song is harsh, his throat burning and his voice rough, filled with anger at the emptiness. But the softness returns to his song, in time, coming with dull acknowledgement, if not healing. It even begins to recall something of the golden voice he once had, a lifetime ago. Ironic, he thinks, that he of all people should be the last one left. The one that many thought was kinder, more forgiving. For a while he had almost believed it himself, but he knows it is a lie. He thinks of how it felt, his armour like a skin of metal, his twin swords like extensions of his arms, slicing through the air, biting into flesh. He could not pinpoint the exact time, but somewhere along the way he had become horribly accustomed to the feeling, falling into the rhythm, which began to come to him as easily as music. A perversely elegant dance of death.

The curse of the jewels still lingers on him, although they are gone. There can be no forgiveness, not this time. Maitimo forgave him, once. And just for a second, Macalaurë had felt a flash of anger, a moment of hatred, even for his dear brother whom he had abandoned. Who had returned to him. After everything he had done, how dare Maitimo simply look him in the eye and forgive him, voice flat and dead and matter-of-fact? He would almost have preferred Maitimo’s rage and resentment until the end of time, if there had been some chance of leaving behind this guilt.

Of course this is not true. He does not hate his brother. He sees his face every day, just as he sees the faces of all his other brothers, and of his father. He wonders if they are still in pain. He wonders if he will ever see them again.

He wonders if he will ever see anyone whom he once loved again.

And he wonders if he wants to. 

He had been a fool, he knew, to dare hope that the children would bring them any measure of redemption. A damned, sentimental, desperate fool. But even now he cannot find it in his heart to regret that particular decision. They had been relatively safe, for a time, and of that at least he is glad. But they are gone now. He will never see them again, although he could if he chose to. He could find them. But he knows this way is for the better.

And in the meantime the world carries on, and so does he. It is an important distinction, he thinks, between living and carrying on. There is so much  _time_ , and so much life, and yet he feels like only a fading relic of long forgotten days, singing to the iron-grey sea, walking the shores in defiance of he knows not what. 


End file.
